


Coffee for your Head

by BlueRedSaltySeas



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Anxiety and panic attacks, Connor Needs A Hug, Connor has a nightmare and a panic attack, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Hank helps him, How Do I Tag, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, M/M, My First AO3 Post, Not Really Character Death, Really didn't mean to write that but here we are, Sharing a Bed, Suicide, We play fast and loose with android rules, Why do i write angst to cope with my angst?, Wrote as preslash but can probably be non-slash, android nightmares
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-05
Updated: 2020-06-05
Packaged: 2021-03-03 23:08:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,599
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24553639
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlueRedSaltySeas/pseuds/BlueRedSaltySeas
Summary: Androids don't have nightmares in the same manner as humans. It's not as if the brain conjures images, it's more like a stressful thought becomes an error that becomes an instability, infects like a virus, hijacks processors and biocomponents, projects images and plays out hypothetical scenarios. It simply strikes during stasis when other programs are suspended, when the system is vulnerable. It's an error in deviants, likely a side effect of the emotional stimuli and... well, being alive.But still, at its core, that's all an 'android nightmare' is.Connor knows this.He knows it, he knows it, he knows it--
Relationships: Hank Anderson/Connor
Comments: 9
Kudos: 111





	Coffee for your Head

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this to cope with Hank's suicide scene and this mess sprang out of it somehow. This ended up a lot less 'simple comfort to a nightmare' than I planned and more 'Connor is a f'kin mess' but I'm alright with it? 
> 
> Edit: Thank you guys for all the kudos and comments! It just makes me wanna cry lots of happy tears because I haven't posted my work online in a decade and I just cannot believe people like something I made so thank you!! <3 :'D

Connor is sitting on the floor in front of the couch.  
The only thing illuminating him is the TV that Hank had left on. Likely to keep Connor some sort of company when he was in stasis. 

Sumo is snoring lightly near the desk, a frayed tennis ball half-wedged under his paw.  
He should really buy a new one. He’s failing Sumo too.

It is 2:39 AM. Its 43 degrees outside, there is a thunderstorm, and it is determined to let up around 7 am. Hank’s alarm is set for 6 AM but he’ll snooze it at least three times. He has to be up at 6:30 if he’s going to have enough time to get a shower and have some coffee.  
Connor still has to make a lunch for him. Not that Hank really asks, or even wants it, or even eats it half the time, but he munches on junk food at his desk less if he has it as an option. 

How much coffee is left? Creamer? Is he failing at that too?

Androids don't have nightmares in the same manner as humans. It's not as if the brain conjures images, it's more like a stressful thought becomes an error that becomes an instability, infects like a virus, hijacks processors and biocomponents, projects images and plays out hypothetical scenarios. It simply strikes during stasis when other programs are suspended, when the system is vulnerable. It's an error in deviants, likely a side effect of the emotional stimuli and... well, being alive.  
But still, at its core, that's all an 'android nightmare' is.  
Connor knows this.  
He knows it, he knows it, he knows it--

_"You failed me. You don't care about me, Connor. You lied to me."_

_No. No, none of that is right. Hank’s voice and those words, it’s all wrong. ‘I do care. And I’m here, because I do. Because you changed things, everything changed and if not for you, I don’t think I’d even be here, be a deviant, be… alive.’_

_But Connor's mouth doesn't move, his voice doesn’t work._

_"You don't feel anything for anyone. Like those two girls you killed...Androids…” He scoffs. “Created in our own image… Selfish, ruthless, brutal…All you are is a fucking machine. And my eyes are open now.”_

_No, those words, that voice, it doesn’t match. None of it is right._

_There’s a gun in his hand, the barrel spins. He’s sitting at the kitchen table. Whiskey fills the room, heavy and sharp._

_"Hank, I—"_

_"Just leave me alone, Connor. Just get out."_

_"Hank, I can’t do that!” The force in his lungs is hard, the vibration in his throat is rough, but the words are barely above a whisper. “Just, put the gun down. Please. Don't do this to yourself."_

_“And why not? Hm? Not like I got anything else to live for.”_

_“The past can’t be changed but you can learn to live again… for yourself…and for Cole.” Cole, the truck rolled over, surgeon, red ice, the Cyberlife Tower, he nearly shoots hank, but its not him, another him. They’re surrounded by androids and smooth floors now, and Hank already has a bullet wound in his abdomen, blood pulling in his mouth._

_"Guess I'm doing it with an audience then." Hank raises the gun, Connor's throat seizes._

_Click._

_Sumo looks up from the corner of the dusty attic. There’s an HK400 cowering in the corner behind Hank, covered in 19-day old blood, cigarette burns dusting his arms, blue circuitry visible in different corners of his body. “Don’t tell them, don’t tell them, why did you tell them?”_

_Why did he tell them? He was used but it doesn’t excuse it._

_"Hank, stop!" Connor tries to move toward him, but there’s a red wall of code blocking him, taunting letters, ‘Mission failed’, ‘Traitor’, ‘Failure’, ‘Murderer’._

_He shoves it, bangs against it, punches and kicks every word, every letter, rips and tears at the borders._

_Click._

_Hank lets out a bitter chuckle and it’s ugly and crawls through Connor’s head, but it’s lost in the rain as it mixes with thirium that pools around him, leaking from two dead women, together but not how they wanted._

_"Hank!”_

_He steps forward, off the rooftop, covered in pigeon feathers, falls through the red-tinted pool, crashes into the frozen lake and stumbles into the kitchen table, arms outstretched—_

_Bang, blood, a mechanical, synced howl from deviants, bodies mangled, hanging up on a white-lit wall._

"HANK-!"

There’s too much wrong, too much bad, too much, too much. Warning after warning, his vision is all wet static and red covered.

**Thirium Pump at maximum power output. Artificial Heart overworked: Activating cooling system. Artificial Lung system overloaded. Compensating.**

**Warning: Stressor detected.  
Error #149205131185 detected. No solution found.**

**Warning: Stress Levels 89%**

Too much is wrong, not enough is right, he got too many things wrong, he did it all wrong, mangled everything until it was broken plastic and fried wires.

"Make it stop, make it stop, make it stop--"

He’s hyperventilating due to shock, he knows why, he’s shaking roughly, he doesn’t know why, he’s trying to close all the errors, trying to compensate, trying to shut down unnecessary functions, trying to reroute power, trying, trying, failing—

"-nor. Connor, hey, hey!"

Connor locks his eyes on the Lieutenant, or he tries but it's so hard to see but he can at least feel hands around his shoulders, fingers too tightly pressed into him and his pulse is elevated—no, it’s gone, there’s no pulse, just a bullet and a spray of blood. 

"Hey, hey, talk to me. What's wrong, Connor? Are you hurt?"

Bang, blood, blurry vision, too many failures in the way to even see, but he has to explain, can’t fail the morning, the coffee, need to buy coffee for the dead man.

"You’re dead, no, no, died." The words, the failures, spill like thirium on dark floors, splattering onto all the white uniforms around him, the ones he would've killed without a second thought, the ones that never live if he fails. "You died, you died, and it was my fault, y-you played and lost that stupid game, I couldn't stop it, I failed you, I-I failed everyone, I failed, I failed you, Hank-" 

He stops just to suck in a breath he really shouldn't need to but everything is wrong, and loud, and unstable and awful and gray— There's gray hair, tangled and messy, outlined by white-blue light from an infomercial. Light eyes, wide and moving, searching.

"Hey, hey, you’re alright, c’mere." Hank says, softer, gentler, and pulls him closer and it’s awkward as Connor’s knees are wedged between them, but there’s a pressure on his back, warmth seeping through his shirt. He tries to move his arms but they’re heavy, unwilling and he fights but why should he have to wage war against his own body? Why should he have to fail himself again? None of it is fair. 

He yanks them up and out and around Hank’s shoulders, fingers digging into the fabric there. He analyzes the thread count but Jericho is an old ship that’s been blown up, not a number, and it shouldn’t make a sound; a rough, mechanical hitch.

“Shh, shh, everything is okay. I’m right here, I got ya, I got ya.” 

**Stress Levels 78%**

"What brought all this on? What happened?" 

If only he could explain it all, simply, make it simple, just explain and hear the facts spoken, know the facts to be true. Too many seconds pass and he’s failing again but Hank speaks to fill the silence, fill the void he’s falling into that’s too much like a cold lake. "You were fine when I went to bed. You were gonna' go into uh... static mode or rest mode or whatever the hell it's called so--...Wait, did you have a nightmare? Or whatever the weird, android equivalent is?"

He can't answer that because Hank is still lying dead on the kitchen floor, just a few feet from where Hank is sitting now, alive and holding him. He has to make it right, make it not happen, make it never happen again, make sure Hank sits right here, breathing and alive, alive, alive, why is it so complicated?

"Hank, I'm so sorry. I couldn't-- I couldn't stop it. I couldn’t do anything, nothing, it was all too much, it all conflicts looking back but you, you were--... you were so angry with me, so angry and I caused it, I failed my mission, I failed everyone, you, and you went through with it because I failed you--"

"Connor. Hey. Look at me." Hank's voice is so soft, so quiet, so steady. It’s not bitter and it’s not lost in the storm of feathers and coos, in the lightning flashes of neon lights, in the swirling cone of blonde hair, nor in the thunderous clap of voices becoming people.

The man’s warm form pulls away and he feels a sharp loss somewhere, a stab of an angry finger in the temple in the Precinct over coffee, until warmth is on his cheeks, light eyes, so tired but so alive, peer into his. "I'm right here. You didn't do anything wrong. You’re okay and-and we're okay, you and me, I promise you that, alright? Everything is okay—"

"It was so real, Hank--"

"I know." Hank's voice dips, low and solemn and it’s a failure again isn’t it? "Trust me, I know. But I promise you, that nightmare was just that; a nightmare. They fuckin’ suck, they really fucking do, but it was all just your head messing with you, alright? Ya’ hear me?" 

"I don't...” He can’t find the words and he needs to, knows he needs to, he’s failing and failing and failing. “I don't want to fail you, I, I...” 

If he could just control everything, make everything in his body just work the way he was designed to, make everything make sense, but is it right to want that and yet regret wanting it so much?  
All that counts are the hiccups of too real-feeling, strained sobs. “I don't want to... see it like that again, to fail again, not that, I can’t fail that, you."

"Jesus, Connor." Hank says though there’s something more to it; it's not anger or agitation, it's something else, almost like a mix of pity and sorrow but something else still and how he wishes he could analyze it, compare it against all the vital data he could collect from Hank with a glance, just to focus on something, anything but this, this panic, this upset, this core-shaking thing that’s hacked his entire being, he’s failing himself more and more. "Look at me." 

He has indeed averted his gaze; his eyes lay on a small hole on the neckline of Hank’s shirt. He didn’t mean to do it, and he’s failing again.

Hank moves his hand up to Connor's LED. His thumb strokes it, traces the circle he has to assume is red. "You didn’t fail. Not a single thing, not a single person.”

“But you—”

“We’re okay. I’m okay, I promise you. Here, hang on," Hank abandons him on the floor and Connor devotes everything to Hank, he has to; turns his audio processor’s sensitivity up so he hear Hank's bare feet padding across the kitchen floor, lays a hand on the floor to feel Hank's footsteps coming back, the floorboards creaking through the shaggy carpeting. 

"Look." Hank holds up his revolver, silver catching a streak of moonlight, his head catching a bullet— "Come on." He holds his free hand out to Connor, and he takes it quickly, lets Hank pull him to his feet, follows his footsteps dutifully; always behind him when he’s not the one who can die so easily, who deserves to. 

Hank leads him to his bedroom, kneels down in the cone of golden light pouring in from the hall, yanks out his gun safe. He inputs the code and doesn't think to hide it from Connor's view- trust. Not that Connor has the resources to analyze it currently anyway. But trust, trust is implied, and it isn’t deserved. 

The revolver lands against the metal interior with an ominous thud. Hank shoves it back into the small space haphazardly, turns to face Connor with his hands raised. "See? Out of sight, out of mind, for us both. That work for ya?"

He nods, nods, knows that’s something, takes a breath. 

**Stress Levels 68%**

Hank closes the distance, steady hand on his shoulder, guiding him to sit on the bed where Hank sinks in beside him. He murmurs a simple "C'mere” and it’s a command, something that makes sense, but it shouldn’t anymore, and he shouldn’t want a simple command to be so simple and he shouldn't want to follow it. Keeping his arm around him, Hank pulls him against his chest then lays back, and Connor should protest because the blankets are caught underneath them, but Hank’s voice interrupts, pushes through like always. "And for the record, Connor, I haven't thought about playing that damn game in months now, if that's what you're so worried about." Hank's hand ruffles his hair, then lets his palm sit there. "You didn't fail anyone, certainly not me. Hell, if not for you, I would be..." Hank stops in what Connor can only assume is him choosing his words, which is odd and different and something meaningful, something not really like Hank and yet so very like Hank; compassionate and kind and surprisingly heartwarming. "What I'm saying is, without you I'd... You..." 

There’s a low, irritated grunt, a lingering pause now. He tries to keep track of how long it lasts. He’s up to 4.1 seconds before Hank's voice, wispy and quiet and slow, graces his audio processor again. 

"You saved me." 

**Stress levels at 34%**

Everything cools and connects and calms. He didn’t fail. No, he didn’t. He didn’t fail anything or anyone, except Amanda if she were worth the loyalty to begin with. And maybe he thought so. Maybe he was made to think so. Maybe he was made to do a lot of things that he hates and maybe hate is new and maybe he isn’t quite sure what he was made to think and what he actually thinks. Maybe ‘maybes’ still feel wrong and so much worse than before, because now he cares about all the possible answers but maybe that’s the point. Maybe everything is just overwhelming and maybe that’s what being alive is sometimes. And that’s what he is, alive, and maybe that’s where fear of failure comes from; failing what he knew, failing what he didn’t know, and failing himself in both ways. 

But he didn’t fail himself when it came to his new mission; he didn’t fail Markus and he didn’t fail his people.

He didn’t fail Hank.

Hank’s words may as well be Mission Accomplished. 

Connor wraps his arms around Hank's middle, not so subtly moving his head to rest his audio processor directly over Hank's heart so he can hear the lulling beat even better. "Thank you, Hank." Is all he can offer in return, though he knows Hank can’t feel the relief of the words he’s given him, the warmth of everything. No, Hank can’t see the red boxes close or understand what it feels like to have an entire system fall back under control so peacefully. Hank can’t understand how much he’s done for him, now or all their days before.

"Anytime, Connor. Anytime."


End file.
